Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 226 to 250 of 609 results

226. Victory Over Darkness

Isaiah 9:1-7

Sermon

King Duncan

... for a place to stay, would find their way to their home and be welcomed with open doors and open hearts. The English authorities, finding this Irish "superstition" harmless, did not bother to suppress it. The candles in the windows have always remained a cherished practice of the Irish, although many of them have long since forgotten the earlier significance. (4) Think of that. All year long they hoped and prayed that on this one night a priest would visit their home. In the same way Israel, for centuries ...

227. Flies On The Ceiling Of The Sistine Chapel

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

King Duncan

... , TOUCH, TASTE OR SMELL. This experience on the Mount of Transfiguration was no ordinary mountaintop experience. It was not simply a matter of Peter, James and John being moved by the beauty of creation as we sometimes are on a church retreat. Oh, we cherish such experiences to be sure. In the German classic, FAUST, the writer Goethe describes a pact that Dr. Faust makes with the devil. The pact allows Faust to satisfy his every human want and desire except one. Never, never under any circumstances, is he ...

228. An Empty Stage Or An Empty Tomb?

Luke 24:1-12

Sermon

King Duncan

... as you and I are alive? Remember Woody Allen's comic assessment? "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work," he said. "I want to achieve immortality by not dying." Which is it? Are we immortal because there are those who remember and cherish the fact that once we walked this "vale of tears" or are we immortal because Christ has once and forever battered down the gates of death? Empty stage or empty tomb? DEATH IS OFTEN AN UGLY EXPERIENCE. It means separation, loss, heartache beyond description ...

229. Responding Instead Of Reacting

Jeremiah 28:1-17

Sermon

Dr. B. Bruce Humphrey

... . WHEN WE PAUSE TO RESPOND, WE GIVE GOD A CHANCE TO SPEAK AND TO ACT. If Jeremiah had merely spoken with no time for thought, the words would have been his words and not God's. Sometimes we need to pause to listen to God. Most of us cherish the music of Handel's "Messiah," particularly at Christmas. We love the beautiful choruses and the solos. We stand together reverently as we listen to the "Halleluia Chorus." But most of us don't know much about Handel's life and what brought him to write "Messiah." In ...

230. Hope For The End Times

Luke 21:5-38

Sermon

King Duncan

... to be found not sitting on a roof-top looking crazily into the sky, but ministering to God's children. I'm sure you've heard of Marva Collins. She's the brilliant educator who founded Westside Preparatory School in Chicago in 1975. She has nurtured and cherished so many children, including three of her own. She has taken the children under her tutelage to exceptional heights. She expresses it this way: "God gives me a strong back to endure the pace of what is expected of me here and to be reminded that we ...

231. Rejected

Matthew 21:33-46

Sermon

King Duncan

... we're not. It is a common experience. Everyone who has ever walked this earth has been rejected at some time in his or her life. And that includes Jesus. That is what the cross is all about. Before it was on our altar it was on his back. We cherish the cross as the symbol of our salvation but before it was the symbol of salvation, it was the symbol of rejection, it was the symbol of pain, it was the symbol of failure. Jesus knew what it was to be rejected. Recently, a West German theologian, Dr. Hanz ...

232. Busybodies

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... not the end of the world. There is hope. There is forgiveness. Psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp says that one of the greatest challenges of his profession is to help people overcome their fears. Only then can a person realize his or her true potential. Kopp cherishes a story from his father's childhood that illustrates how unreasonable fears overwhelm us at times. Kopp's father grew up in desperate poverty in the heart of New York City. As a boy, he would often hang around the local shipyards and throw stones ...

233. Are You Available?

Luke 14:25-35

Sermon

King Duncan

... Doesn't it concern you at times that perhaps we have chosen the wide gate and not the narrow one, the easy road and not the road that leads to life? Chiune Sugihara was born on a day of new beginnings January 1, 1900. As a boy, he cherished the dream of becoming the Japanese ambassador to Russia. By the 1930s, he was the ambassador to Lithuania, just a step away from Russia. One morning, a huge throng of people gathered outside his home. They were Jews who had made their way across treacherous terrain from ...

234. The Gift Of Freedom

1 Peter 1:13-2:3

Sermon

Landon Winstead

... me free, and I will change my ways. Give me another chance to live, and I will really live life to the fullest." Victor Frankl knew the tragedy of the holocaust. He was a prominent Jewish physician, who was kept alive because his medical ability was cherished by the Nazi leaders. Still he was persecuted and several times near death. He was separated from his family, and many of them died in the concentration camps. He survived. MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING is one of the books that chronicles his experience and ...

235. Where Is Your Heart?

Luke 12:22-34

Sermon

King Duncan

... , we love our country. Some of us have had family members and friends who have died for our country. So when the flag is passing by or the national anthem is sung, we place our hand on our heart, for our heart is with this land. We cherish the freedom and the security and the opportunity that it provides. Former U.S. Secretary of Education, Dr. William Bennett, was asked this question by a seventh grader: "How can you tell a good country from a bad one?" Secretary Bennett replied, "I apply the 'gate' test ...

236. Behind Closed Doors

Joel 2:12-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... 's famous painting "Nightwatch" he took out a knife and slashed it repeatedly. A short time later, a distraught, hostile man slipped into St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome with a hammer and began to smash Michelangelo's beautiful sculpture The Pieta. Two cherished works of art were severely damaged. But what did officials do? Throw them out and forget about them? Absolutely not! Using the best experts, who worked with the utmost care and precision, they made every effort to restore the treasures. (4) And that ...

237. The Bridge Builder

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

King Duncan

... like Donald Duck, because he wasn't making any sense. The Jews had waited hundreds of years for the coming Messiah. They had been persecuted, enslaved, tortured, oppressed by governments that defiled their religion and culture. And it was their most cherished belief that when the Messiah came, He would come in power and might. He would destroy the pagan governments that oppressed the Jews, and would set up a kingdom of righteousness on earth. Through strength and power--through bloodshed, if necessary ...

238. Building a Nation

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

King Duncan

... Jefferson, "Nice piece of writing Tom, y'all enjoy your USA, send me a postcard from Colonial Williamsburg." No, it took seven years of struggle before the Constitution could be written. (2) Have we forgotten the struggle involved in this noble experiment of democracy? Do we cherish this land or do we shy from a word like "patriotism" because it's been co-opted by the fanatic fringe? To be "patriotic" is not to be blind to our nation's sins. Like every nation, we have our weak points. A family of refugees ...

239. How Many Times Should We Forgive?

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

King Duncan

... look behind. Their eye is on the finish line. Magnanimous people forget. They're too big to let little things disturb them. They forget easily. If anyone does them wrong, they consider the source and keep cool. It's only the small people who cherish revenge. Be a good forgetter. Business dictates it, and success demands it." (9) Do you understand that? Big people forget and forgive? Only little people carry around resentments from the past. III. Even more important, forgiving is life lived in the image of ...

240. It Could Happen To You!

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Siegfried S. Johnson

... , words which narrow the focus of Easter's impact. Those last two words add a vital dimension to Easter. This passage is preceded in Luke 24 with the wonderful story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. This touching story was told, remembered and cherished by the Christian community because they understood it as a great help in appropriating Easter to themselves. The question standing out in this story is not a theological treatise on "How did God raise Jesus from the dead," or "Why did God raise Jesus ...

241. The Good Parent

John 10:1-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... shepherd," said Jesus, "I know my sheep and my sheep know me." For those of you who are basketball fans, let me put it like this: the good parent plays man-to-man, not zone. One of the magnificent teachings of the Bible is that God knows and cherishes each of us as individuals. When God looks at us, God does not see a blob of humanity. God sees Ann, and George, and Manuel and Chamiqua. God loves us as individuals. When their son Creed was four, Dallas businessman Richard Green and his wife set aside one ...

242. Unprepared

Matthew 25:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... we did not take a situation seriously. SOMETIMES BEING UNPREPARED CAN BE A SERIOUS MATTER. Being left out of a wedding party may not be the world's greatest crisis, but there are times when not being prepared can be sad, indeed. One of the most cherished events in our history was the landing of the MAYFLOWER on these shores. One hundred and two Pilgrims stepped from their storm-tossed little ship with unsteady legs and huge relief. It would be difficult to imagine a group of people more ill-suited to a ...

243. Entertaining Angels

Hebrews 13:1-25

Sermon

King Duncan

... strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Now there are a couple of ways of interpreting his words. IT COULD BE THAT HE WAS ADVOCATING SIMPLE HOSPITALITY TO STRANGERS: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers . . ." Hospitality to strangers is a cherished tradition in Middle Eastern countries. There is an old legend that tells how Abraham pitched his great tent at a crossroad. The flaps of that tent were lifted on all four sides so that he might discern the approach of any stranger ...

244. Life Is What Happens When You've Made Other Plans

Genesis 37:1-11

Sermon

Dr. Robert E. Lair

... me and I don't much care." The young man never fully recovered from his disappointment. He entered the Episcopal ministry. He served many congregations in Philadelphia and Boston. His name was Phillips Brooks. Of all the letters he received in his life, the one that he cherished most was from a tailor in a small shop near Copley Square in Boston. It said: "Dear Mr. Brooks: I am a tailor in a little shop near your church. Whenever I have the opportunity, I always go to hear you preach. Each time I hear you ...

245. Expectant Living

2 Peter 3:1-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... of the terminal patients they interviewed found peace in the face of death. In fact, many of them found greater meaning and beauty in life after learning that they would die. One man lived four years past his doctor's prognosis. In that time, he learned to cherish every moment of life. As he said, "If you are told you will never see spring again, and you live to see spring, spring takes on a whole new life." (5) Nothing focuses our priorities quite like the knowledge of our own mortality. Advent is not a ...

246. Why He Came

Mark 1:29-34

Sermon

King Duncan

... of my life." Jesus healed Simon's mother-in-law. We hope this was something Simon was enthusiastic about. It probably was. We don't hear mother-in-law jokes like we used to. That's a step forward. After all, most of us have mothers-in-law that we cherish. Mark tells us that Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever. When they told Jesus about her, he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. Poor lady. No opportunity to recuperate. No ...

247. Sacred Memories

Deuteronomy 26:1-15

Sermon

King Duncan

... cries out for his past--painful memories and all. He wants what he has lost, for without his memories he is nothing. Wilting inside, he cries out again and again, "Keep my memory green. Keep my memory green." (3) What a powerful story. We do cherish our memories, don't we? Memories of our childhood, memories of those we once loved who are now with God, memories of our wedding day, the birth of our children, our baptism or confirmation, memories of vacations, and significant victories at work, and all kinds ...

248. Danny Devito In A Tree

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... the sick. He didn't come for those who are strong, but those who are weak. He didn't come for those who are found, but for those who are lost. Does that fit anybody here today? Is this a time of discouragement for you? Have some of your most cherished dreams been shattered? Do you feel that no one understands? There is one who does understand. He knows your name. And he cares. He cares so much that he would lay down his own life in your behalf. In fact he has laid down his life in your behalf. Jesus ...

249. Who Am I Supposed To Hate?

Luke 14:25-35

Sermon

King Duncan

... Barbara Bennett's ad when I read today's lesson. Jesus said, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple . . ." Say what? Hey, this is a church that cherishes its families. What in the world can Jesus mean by this--hate your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters? Oh, sure, we get a little upset with them from time to time. Like the lady who was showing an insurance agent through her ...

250. To Whom Shall We Go?

John 6:60-71

Sermon

King Duncan

... with us. After all, commitment to Christ is an expensive proposition, and those whose faith is weakest will deprive God before they will deprive themselves. True Christian commitment costs money and time. It may deprive us of the creature comforts that we cherish. So in these self-centered, me-first times, the temptation to forsake Christ is strong. When Christ asks, "Will you leave me also?" The wise heart responds, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" Give that question careful consideration before you make your ...

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